Let me take you now to Dunn’s Assembly Rooms where a gathering of the lauded and the landed are crammed in for a festival of piping such as we would not hear today. The gentlemen are there with their ladies, powdered and puffed, feigning interest and knowledge. Wagers are flying: ‘Forsooth, my man will trounce yours or your hounds can take my stags at will….’Nay sire, keep your Scots punds and your deer…yon McGrigor plays so ill it would be a sin worthy of the cutty stool to take even a bowel of parridge from you….’
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Politically the tunes show a huge turnaround in public opinion since the ’45. How many times was the Prince’s Salute played? I counted 13 (brain numbing or what?), and we even had a My King Has Landed in Moidart – this less than 50 years since the Jacobite hordes had ravaged Scotland’s central belt in a revolt that led to the exile and execution of many of the relatives of the gentry now assembled. Clearly there must have been some reaction, some celebration to the lifting of the Act of Proscription only three years previous. I marked only two tunes – three if we count Sherrifmuir – associated with the MacCrimmons, pipers to the Hanoverian MacLeods. Does that tell us something about the 1785 zeitgeist? Given the reverence with which we are told the MacCrimmons were held by pipers, I think so. They were, after all still ploughing their teaching trade.
One correspondent yesterday speculated that perhaps the pipers only played part of each piece. I think this unlikely. Judges and audience would want to hear the finger fireworks at the end, something even today the untutored will remark on as the best bit of any piobaireachd. No, it would be the full tune I am sure, but I stand by my earlier comment that it would be unlikely that grounds would be repeated in a competition setting such as this. It is here that the fashion of excluding them may have begun.
In a recital matters would be quite different. Drones would not hold anything like they do today – not a chance. Inter-tune tuning would be the answer, and on resumption of the performance, a repeat of the urlar to restore to the listener the lodestone of the piece, and on we go. In a long competition this would not be an option and it would have to be howling drones to the end, an accepted fact of piping life. Remember, it is not so long ago that drones going out was still the norm; post-war Donald MacPherson changed all that.
A couple of other points: what about the 12-year-old John McGrigor, son of the 1784 winner John McGrigor, Fortingal. How many today of that age could tackle the Battle of Sherrifmuir? Perhaps he was one who did only play the ground.
And what about the age of the winner.? Donald McIntyre weighed in at a mere 75 years of age – a real showing up for those of us who hung up the competitive chanter before drawing the state pension.
One last point. What was the ‘Irish pibrachd’, Pibrachd Earranach, played by John MacPherson from Badenoch. The only tune I know of with such an association is the Lament for the Earl of Antrim.
As before I’d welcome any thoughts on the above and on yesterday’s piece.